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Respecting Riot's decision to effectively nerf Oracle's Elixir for season 3, NemesisOfReason is suggesting an increase to the amount of gold acquired from clearing a ward by "x" amount, while keeping the changes made to Oracles intact! This helps against snowballing teams because they are more likely to have more wards around the map, which means that the losing team will likely have more wards to clear than the snowballing team. This leads to an effective net gold benefit for the losing team and should consequently increase their chances of "getting back into the game" through added incentive to take back control of the map with Oracles (still a high risk item, especially if one's team is losing).

Early-mid game, this change will provide a greater incentive/compensation for champions to spend time clearing wards at the expense of possible kills/assists/saves/jungle gold/minion gold/etc., while still putting themselves at risk of dying without much benefit and possibly setting themselves way back early-mid game (it seems to be rarely bought early-mid game now).

Here is a re-post of some comments made in a previous thread for conceptual clarification purposes:

"Considering that clearing one Sight Ward grants your team a net benefit of 100g, one would have to clear 4 Sight Wards (not necessarily a simple task) in order to break even with the cost of Oracle's Elixir as you mentioned. At the higher levels of play, it was typically the jungler who was the first to buy Oracles back in season 2. Ganking with Oracles is fine, but when you fail a gank a die (not uncommon) or if you get ambushed and die, you set yourself way back for early-mid game. Clearing wards typically requires that you set aside time and possibly put yourself in dangerous positions (opponents know where you are when you are near/clearing a ward and can guess where you will go afterwards) in order to actually find and clear the wards; during that time, you lose out on gold and experience from the jungle and/or possible kills/assists/saves.

Oracle's Elixir has always been a high risk, high skill (need good map awareness as to not die and knowledge of ideally every possible warding position as the situation demands), high reward item, but now it is a high risk, high skill, even lower reward item (no more than 5 minutes of effectiveness in season 3). With Sightstone being a staple on some roles/champions (an item that pays for itself in ~14 mins assuming you place a ward everytime when it is possible, on top of the health that it already gives), there needs to be a more worthwhile method of dealing with ward proliferation (one could always buy additional wards). From personal observation, many pros seem to agree that Oracle's Elixir is just not worth it anymore early-mid game. I would like to see Oracles get used throughout all stages of the game while still retaining its high risk aspect."

Nope Oracles shouldn't be allowed to be high risk strong rewards all game sorry

Do explain. The high rewards is not guaranteed, in fact it is more than possible for it to be a "negative" reward (opposing team benefits from you falling behind). Even if the reward were potentially high, it would be limited to 5 minutes (not all game unless you decide to continuously dispense 400g each time it wears off, in which case you will likely fall behind in important items and possibly fall behind in general as a result). As it is, I feel like the rewards are underwhelming compared to the high risk and high skill involved with using Oracles.

Oracle's has changed from a blanket "You should never ward ever while I have this" to a "I'm / We're going to make something happen in the next five minutes so let's make sure we can clear wards around the area we want to do it."

It's a much bigger investment now, as your death is no longer the only timer for how much effectiveness you can squeeze into it.

Oracle's has changed from a blanket "You should never ward ever while I have this" to a "I'm / We're going to make something happen in the next five minutes so let's make sure we can clear wards around the area we want to do it."

It's a much bigger investment now, as your death is no longer the only timer for how much effectiveness you can squeeze into it.

I see no reason to really change that.

A couple of points:

1) It was never the case with Oracles that "You should never ward ever while I have this"; both teams warded regularly regardless of any circumstance. To simplify, it was never the case where using Oracles would dissuade the other team from warding (at least not at the competitive or high levels of play).

2) You have not explained why a Oracle's Elixir being bigger investment is a good thing, you only mentioned that it is good.

3) I am not proposing that Riot change Oracle's Elixir time limit of 5 minutes or its associated gold cost, in fact I support the changes they have made to it.

1) It was never the case with Oracles that "You should never ward ever while I have this"; both teams warded regularly regardless of any circumstance. To simplify, it was never the case where using Oracles would dissuade the other team from warding (at least not at the competitive or high levels of play).

2) You have not explained why a Oracle's Elixir being bigger investment is a good thing, you only mentioned that it is good.

1. Cause the support to be starved of gold because they have to keep rebuying wards because of you, which face it something riot and a lot of players really wanted to change.

2. Oracles was too unrisky before for it's reward, it was never intended to be an item brought by 5-10 mins mark by junglers and then deny vision ALL game. Which you seem to disagree with, if you want to deny vision all game it is going to have a large opportunity cost compared to minimal one for S2, riot stated they want denial of vision and over warding to come at more costs than they did in S2 (hence sightstone having 2/3 ward limiter).

1. Cause the support to be starved of gold because they have to keep rebuying wards because of you, which face it something riot and a lot of players really wanted to change.

2. Oracles was too unrisky before for it's reward, it was never intended to be an item brought by 5-10 mins mark by junglers and then deny vision ALL game. Which you seem to disagree with, if you want to deny vision all game it is going to have a large opportunity cost compared to minimal one for S2, riot stated they want denial of vision and over warding to come at more costs than they did in S2 (hence sightstone having 2/3 ward limiter).

Some points:

1) Supports were never starved of gold simply because someone was clearing their wards. Their primary gold income came from innate gp5, gp5 masteries, gp5 runes, gp5 items, occasional creep score, and kills/assists/towers/objectives. Supports being "starved of gold because they have to keep rebuying wards" is a relatively insignificant factor when compared to the combined effect of all these other factors.

2) Your statement that point #1 was something that "riot and a lot of players really wanted to change " is unsupported; at least not in the context of supports being starved of gold due to wards being cleared by the other team. Please substantiate this claim.

3) On the contrary, Oracle's Elixir has always been a high risk item with the POSSIBILITY of a high reward (not guaranteed and not necessarily easy to achieve). Please refer to the first post for a more detailed explanation of why I think Oracle's Elixir is a high risk item; you offered little to no explanation regarding this point. While you did talk about vision denial, you failed to link it to the idea of why Oracle's Elixir is an unrisky item for its reward(s); instead you essentially only mentioned that it needs to have a higher cost.

4) Again, your statement that "[Oracle's Elixir] was never intended to be an item brought by 5-10 mins mark by junglers and then deny vision ALL game" is unsupported. Provide the evidence for this claim. I do not recall Riot ever making this statement either explicitly or implicitly. Denying vision all game is not something that is guaranteed by simply purchasing the item. It requires a high degree of skill from the user (refer to the first post) and a competent team to utilize its benefits. Even then, there is no guarantee that you will deny vision to the opposing team "ALL game"; Oracle's Elixir is likely to be purchased multiple times by various members of a team throughout the course of a single match at the expense of purchasing other items (refer to the first post).

5) I never agreed or disagreed with point #2 (assuming it were true). This is simply you putting words in my mouth; it was never a point I made explicitly or implicitly, hence you cannot infer that I disagree with your statement.